October 16, 2008

kansas city sports sanity and kurt vonnegut.

i'm starting to realize how cubs fans actually do it - how it is that they can go for 100 years and counting without winning a world series and still be as passionate as ever about their team.

it hasn't even been two years since the chiefs limped into the playoffs with a measly 9-7 due to a denver crumble and a last minute 49er field goal on new years eve. the royals haven't played a post-season game in my lifetime. i've been fortunate to have been a cardinals fan for most of my life, but now that i've seen them win it all i really feel as if my true loyalty is with the royals. i'm a kc fan. thats just the way it is.

with immense failure comes equally immense disappointment. after a while that disappointment turns to humor. cynicism? perhaps, but at some point the missed tackles, strikeouts, pitifully immobile quarterbacks and hopeless franchises start to make you smile. expectations flip upside down and you find yourself rooting for alex gordon to strikeout so that it will enhance your argument that teahen should be moved back to third and alex should go rip it up in AA again.

i'm realizing that when you truly love a team and they have the collective ability of eric warfield there comes a point where their disappointment is no longer abrasive to your emotions, but it is almost somewhat warming and fun - like an 4 year-old who gets caught coloring murals on the walls - you'd rather the kid didn't, but let's be honest, it's pretty funny.

how do the columnists do it? how about the cubs columnist who's worked for the chicago tribune for 40 years following 40 years of inept chicago baseball? how do they want to write another depressing article about the team's past, present and probable future? doesn't jason whitlock ever get tired of writing to fire carl peterson? doesn't joe posnanski ever tire of covering the royals' latest "hope" coming up in omaha? imagine that stretched out over 40 years! the only possible articles the worth writing would be at the sake of humor.

this is when kurt vonnegut comes in:"laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. i myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward."

"humor is an almost physiological response to fear."

does the man hit the nail on the head or what? where else is there to go but to the funny papers with this? i tell you what, if someone had started a comic strip called "wrigley field" back in the early 1900's they would've just made a killing over the last century through all sorts of dark humor. maybe someone should work toward a strip called "arrowhead" or "collapsing with carl" or "youth movement".

i will hope and pray that the chiefs and royals improve, but in the meantime i'm just going to chuckle and root for john buck. he's my coping mechanism. God forbid someone else takes him away from us.